Your smartphone apps are handy for you, not for low-wage workers

An interesting article in Salon, Your iPhone Kills Jobs, maintains that iPhone, Android, and other smartphone apps kill some jobs and makes other jobs worse. The vast majority of the jobs affected are those populated by the underclass of foreign workers abused by companies like Foxconn, and American workers in the low end jobs largely populated by workers like single moms, undereducated workers, and unemployed people who once had better jobs. These people are trapped because they need the work and yet their jobs are in such demand that individual employees are disposable. Better not rock the boat.

Another thing smartphone technology does is take low-wage workers we often had to see into situations where they work behind the scenes and out of sight.

Once again, technology eliminates some jobs and makes other ones worse.

Technology always has had this impact, and there will always be so called sunset industries. The car killed off the farrier, the telephone displaced the telegraph operator, and the retail stores made the mom'n'pop all but disappear. One way to look at it is that through the optics of creative destruction, as defined by Schumpeter, whereby new innovations ensure that the established players in a market cannot achieve a monopoly. While such paradigm shifts often hurt individuals, they do profit society as a whole and ensure a smoothly operating market economy.

The way to "fix" it would be to nationalize the economy and slow down the rate of technological progress. There would be less gain to society, but at least misery would be more equally distributed.

Sorry for writing a book, but government is a bit of a passion of mine, and this is one aspect of government that grinds on my nerves. I do hope you take the time to read it.

It isn't technology, It's greed. And Jobs aren't being killed, they are being controlled, like the diamond market. Jobs come out of the woodwork when progress and productivity are the main driving factors in companies, but when the main goal of a company is to maximize profits, then jobs suffer. After all, you can't squeeze every last penny out of your company if your workers have comfortable shifts/ workloads and healthy wages.

Companies have lost site of their purpose in society. You don't go into the grocery business primarily to make money. Your first responsibility as a grocery company is to provide food for your community at reasonable prices. Just in America over the last thirty to forty years, workloads have increased and wages have remained relatively the same, the minimum wage increasing by a quarter here, a penny there. Jobs have been shaved off and outsourced to create a deranged form of job competition. You have to work hard to find a job, and even harder to keep it. And of course you have a choice. A Hobson's choice. You can either work at any job they give you, or you can starve to death. As long as there's a choice, it's not slavery.

Even though it is. Foxconn is just another company employing wage slaves, people who work there because they have no real choice. In fact, nearly every item you own was likely made with slave labor, and the source is greed.

We live in a world where companies and corporations make upwards to 150-200% profits every year by doing things to cut costs as low as humanly possible, from intentionally reducing product quality, ignoring health and safety regulations, actually reducing their infrastructure int the case of service providers, and hiring people who work for wages so low they barely buy enough food for their families, let alone pay any other debts like utilities and rent. All for the sake of Profit.

What can we do to fix this? I had the idea of instituting a Carrot and Stick system of regulation Many companies rely on tax payer subsidies. Right now, these subsidies are paid annually, no matter what. When BP, Shell, or Exxon spill toxic oil into our water supply, should the tax payers give them any money? Hell no! When they sell barrels of oil to hedge funds who ship the barrels to a warehouse, out of the way to artificially inflate demand, should the tax payers give them anything? NO! If anything they need a great big fine, or have their charter revoked. But if they were to expand their business to include geothermal plants, solar and wind farms, to provide cheap energy, or develop an gasoline formula that is easily atomized inside internal combustion engines to increase fuel economy and reduce emissions, then should the tax payers give them any money? Sure. They did something for the benefit of the community on the whole.

This system can be tailored to fit any industry, and should be used to not only punish and discourage unproductive, and non-progressive behavior, but encourage good behavior. The system could take into account worker wages and benefits, workloads and shift times, as well as environmental and infrastructure activities as well. Hardware companies like Foxconn, Gigabyte, Kingston and the like should be punished for hiring wage slaves, and encouraged to invest in assembly robotics, environmentally friendly plastics and conductive components, and healthy working environments. Service providers should be judged by how much they increase their infrastructure to include rural areas, how many jobs they keep INSIDE the country, and how much flexibility they provide their customer base.

This last one I would say could be optional to the system, because it could be considered a little too socialist for sensitive capitalist: I would institute a maximum profit cap. Profits for large private entities can not exceed 100%, that is to say, the amount of money you make after your expenses cannot exceed your expenses. If you spend 100 million dollars this year, you can make back that 100 million, plus up to 100 million in profit. Everything after that must be used, either in expanding your business infrastructure, donating to charity or giving employee bonuses. Anything not used will be collected in taxes for use to benefit the country.

All private entities that make above certain amount annually would be subject to the carrot and stick system. Small business would only be subject to normal regulations.